20 words at a time...an improv writing game!
Round two! With a minor adjustment to the word limit. The objective here is to write a story a few words at a time, working on the fly. Periodically, I'll post and update with the complete story up to it's current point.
For those of you who haven't done this before, here are the rules: 1. Each new post adds a segment of story to the post previous to it. 2. The segment must be *exactly* twenty words, even if this cuts off the segment mid sentence. 3. You may not double post and continue your own segment. 4. You can add comments and such in your posts, just make sure people know they are separate from your story addition, such as changing text colour or adding "OOC" to the front. 5. This is a story, not a role play, so everyone will be working with the same characters as they appear or disappear. This is not the place for original characters that you don't want other people to mess around with. Ninja posting can happen. Don't panic. In that case, just continue according to the last post. It's hardly going to be smooth sailing the entire time. You can change perspectives and such from time to time, but please don't ignore someone else's post since a lot of this is improvisation, and working with what you get handed. Off we go! ===================== Leo stared at the blood coating his knife, his hands trembling, his breathing shallow and rapid. What had he done? |
It was all a dream, of course. It had to be. He pinched himself, hard, to make sure, but
((Oh boy. This might be interesting.)) |
there it was. Hernando, the most feared octopus swordsman in the archipelago, bleeding out in front of him. How
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many men and women had been sliced open by his blades? Or skewered on his hooks? Leo was not a
can't say I saw that coming. |
warrior, had just bumped into Herando. Stepped on a tentacle by accident, really. And then, with hardly a warning, he
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was holding a severed tentacle, eye to bulbous eye with someone who was. He reached a radical conclusion: Hernando had
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((balls. hold on)
(keep going; ignore this post)) |
been taking drugs, and couldn't watch where he was going. In his inebriated state, he was a mere shadow of
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his grand reputation. He had walked into the knife, he must have, but that still left Leo with a bloody
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cephalopod who no doubt had students who would now be seeking to avenge his... let us be blunt, dishonorable death.
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The realization left him where he started, staring at a bloody knife and willing his feet to move. Hernando would
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not be soon forgotten. The story of the Duel Atop the Waterfall was still being told in every tavern from
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Brunsai to Gadilee. There, old salters would clatter their chipped pints of rum together while listening to the legendary ballad.
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There was no choice. Leo needed to get a rocketship. A rocketship to Mars. Pigfarts was the only place he
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heard could offer interplanetary travel. However, when he arrived there by steamboat, he found the place a hoax. He turned
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and saw a humanoid shadow on the horizon. Not a hoax, it seemed, but the directions had been. Then there
this is getting a little bit silly. |
Was a blur of motion, and the shadow was closer. Still a shadow, despite the light. Leo thought he saw
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limbs, unnaturally long, and gleaming knives.
Oh no, he thought. Not again. But Hernando was dead. Did he believe in |
his own abilities enough to fight another ocotopus swordsman, this one looking decidedly less intoxicated? Wait, no, an octopus knife-juggler!
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His answer came with the sudden punch to his shoulder, followed by stinging pain and the trickle of cooling blood.
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"Oh this is not--" cut short as a flurry of flagrantly-flung flipping daggers flew toward him, and he had to
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swing a fist towards the Octopus shade. It went through the juggling knife fiend like smoke. His mouth gaped at
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his empty hand and the multiple hilts protruding from his torso. No, he was not a warrior. He was
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Quite surely slain, bleeding out like a decapitated ox, his vision flashing with the colors of death. Leo died, and
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woke up to a hangover from last night's drought on mind numbing liqueur. He recalled drowning his sorrow over his
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lost job, but... something was wrong. Many somethings. Many holes in his torso, the sodden crimson stain where he lay.
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It wasn't a hangover. It was unconsciousness, and in his near catatonic state he wondered at the footprints that led
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nowhere. His lifeless bleed out in the sand, and the octopus warrior stood impassive above.
"Long live Hernando," he said. |
Dying words, and he couldn't tell if the octopus was smiling or not. Better not to think about it. Better
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to just rest...
A light hung above him, and there was a piercing pain in his chest and back. Alive... |
until a knife slid into his heart.
"Stubborn runt" the octopus uttered as he wiped his blade clean. He squinted I should get around to posting a compiled version soon. |
, never failing to find human blood pathetic in its watery scarlet. He sheathed the knife and set about finding his
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parchment. He scratched through the third name on his list. Hernando would have been proud.
Whatever that light was, he |
had more important things to worry about. There was a council coming, a cephalomoot of the great octopi swordmasters to
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bring forth the great orb. It was a concentrated form of extraterrestrial water. It would be enough to drown the
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barren regions of the planet until the world's end.
Fantasy, Eduardo thought. Aged induced delirium. Still, he had news to share. |
The death of Hernando would leave a void in the rankings, and without judiciary oversight, scholastic war could erupt in
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council, and among their followers. Perhaps the orb legend would keep them occupied, for now. As it was, he would
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make all haste back to the Scriptarium. Hernando's name must be written in the book of death, his legend recorded
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, his murderer's name spat on. All else would be forgotten.
The light that floated above Leo's corpse hovered there for |
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